I have found a great analogy between the stocking waters with fish, and pastures with cattle; and that the same conduct and discretion belong to both. Waters may be over-stocked, as pastures often are; so both may be under-stocked. The latter is the less error; for if you over-stock, you lose the whole summer’s seed; if you under-stock, you lose only the rest of your profit; what you do seed, is much the better, and turns to account by more ready sale. So also of beasts; some of the same age and seeding will not thrive so well as others. I have found the like in my fish. And waters themselves, like pastures, have varieties of goodness; some will raise carps from five to eighteen inches, in five years; others will not do it in ten. This is most sensible between your great waters made upon a fall, and the small standing waters, which have more inconveniencies, and are liable to frosts, and other casualties, more than the others are. Therefore I propose, that the smaller waters should be used as nurseries, and either to breed, or be stocked with the bred fry of other waters, to raise them to a fitness for stores in your principal feed; that is, to six or eight inches. And of these bred fry, you may put one hundred into four rods square of water, or near that proportion, and fail not to remove them in two years time; and so you will have good recruits of stores for your greater waters. And thus the many thousands of bred fish that you will have upon the draining your great waters, which many are apt to slight, may be sent several ways to the waters about that and your neighbour’s grounds, and there fed up like chickens, and in time turn to great profit, as I shall shew; therefore they ought not to be slighted, but carefully to be preserved; the rather, because considering a pond (as I propose) will, though but four acres, feed up one thousand six hundred carps in two, and perhaps in one year, from ten to eighteen inches, fit for your table-presents, or sale. How is it possible you should restock your waters the winter after, without this providential forecast, whereby you have magazines of fish in other ponds, fit stores to supply your occasion? Now, as for your great and principal waters, it is hard to assign a certain proportion for the stock; but perusing the methods I propose, you will soon come to the knowledge what stock the waters will carry; for laying a pond dry every year, you will see the fish well fed, or else thin and lean; and accordingly you judge whether the stock was too little or too much for the water. Thus, by the thickness or fatness of cattle, you judge if your ground will carry more or not; and both as to species and number of fish, experience must be your guide in the stocking of waters. However, to save loss of time, which you must sustain by making your own experience, I will give the best directions I can, for the first entry upon your business, and not leave the matter wholly in the dark.